Geoffrey Hopkirk



Geoffrey Theodore Hopkirk, D.Eng., is a character appearing in Ars Atomica, and is a member of the Immune.

Description
Doctor Hopkirk is a human male, who stands 185.42 centimeters (6 feet, 1 inch) tall and weighs 78 kilograms (171.9 pounds). He has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes.

Pre-War
Born in London on 9 January 2061 and raised in Woking, Surrey, in the pre-War United Kingdom, Hopkirk was an only child. His father Leonard was a member of the Civil Service who worked in London, and his mother was an emergency nurse at Woking Community Hospital. He was a talented student, and loved his mathematics and science courses the most. After completion of secondary, he qualified for a full scholarship to Cambridge, and attended Pembroke College from 2079 to 2086. He graduated in June 2086 with his PhD in energy engineering, specializing in fission and fusion power.

After graduating from Cambridge, Hopkirk was accepted for employment in September of 2086 with the engineering team of the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory at Porton Down in Wiltshire, in South West England. In 2092, he was part of a DSTL team sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratories to work in concert with teams from DARPA and Defense Research & Development Canada. Gathering in the advanced energy laboratory at the Y-12 complex, their aim was to further development of a compact fusion generator design. He was at the laboratory working on the day when the Great War began, on 19 November 2093 (a Thursday), and evacuated to the bunker as the sirens sounded.

On the sixth day in the bunker, Hopkirk was assisting with an assessment of the life support systems in the maintenance section when a critical fault in the cooling system caused coolant from the cryogenic tanks to be pumped directly into the compartment. Hopkirk and his two associates attempted to escape, but were unable to do so because the automatic containment system had sealed the door to prevent the coolant from escaping and contaminating the entire bunker. Trapped, they were frozen by the gas which flooded the compartment.

Post-War
Hopkirk remained frozen in the bunker until being discovered by a crew of Immune workers on 1 May 2334. Realizing the three may still be alive, and curious to learn more about them, the crew took the preserved bodies of Hopkirk and his two compatriots to the infirmary, where the doctors made efforts to revive all them. Despite the best efforts of the doctor and his team, however, only Hopkirk was successfully revived, as it would be discovered during the thawing process that the other two had died from exposure within minutes of losing consciousness and being frozen, having apparently been much closer to the coolant leak.

After overcoming the initial shock of his circumstances and being assured he was all right, Hopkirk learned what had transpired since his accidental freezing. Hopkirk had been in that same exact spot, cryogenically preserved, for 241 years. Thanks to the heavily insulated design of the bunker, the compartment had lost virtually none of its sealed environment and had remained quite cool, and his cryogenic stasis had not been interrupted throughout that entire period. He similarly learned that discovery of the bunker's existance had been a very recent thing, as for years the Immune had been working on restoring Y-12 completely unaware a dedicated bunker was hidden beneath its sublevel. His being found had been pure chance, as it had only been after discovering a data tape mentioning the bunker in the Oak Ridge archives that the work crew had opted to visit the bunker in search of useful data or supplies to bring back. Hopkirk also learned that of the 164 people in Y-12 who had evacuated to the bunker, he was the only one who survived.

With no way to get back to the UK, and finding himself in a community of like minded, scientific people, Hopkins opted to remain at Oak Ridge. The clan was eager to learn from him, as he was the first pre-War person not directly attached to the Omni-Immunity Project that had been conducted in the M-44 bioengineering complex. He allowed the Immune doctors to administer OIP serums to him, enabling him to develop some of the same protections against viral and environmental hazards, and he eventually found his way back into the work ongoing at Y-12, assisting with both the renovations and repairs and the restoration of the labs and workspaces there.

Trivia

 * At 273 years of age, he is the oldest known living person in the American Wastelands, and believed to be the only individual to have lived pre-War who hasn't become a shambler.
 * He is the only person among the Immune who speaks with a true British accent, and one of the only “adopted” members of the clan.

Overview

 * Essential - yes
 * Companion - no
 * Perk - no


 * Merchant - no
 * Doctor - no
 * Rents Bed / Room - no

Quests

 * TBD